Conde Nast trims magazine portfolio

03 November 2008

The not-so-good news in the printing and publishing business seems to have no end. Publisher Condé Nast is reported to have outlined plans to trim its cut budgets on a company-wide scale by at least five per cent, which would include scaling back the number of Portfolio and Men's Vogue issues that it publishes, and at least some lay offs.

The New York Times reported that the Men's Vogue magazine would take the largest hit, moving from 10 issues a year to a bi-annual production schedule that will now see the magazine hit the stands only twice a year. A smaller impact would trickle down to the business-industry publication Portfolio, which will scale back from 12 to 10 issues.

Reports suggest that most of Men's Vogue's operations would be largely unified with those of Vogue, and some components of Portfolio, mostly online which would include ad sales, would be bundled with Wired magazine.

Layoffs are likely to have much broader impact, across the publisher's portfolio of publications, though the bulk of them are reported to be from the Men's Vogue and Portfolio magazines.

Reports suggested that the actions at the Portfolio magazine were mainly on account of sagging ad sales. According to the Magazine Publishers of America, advertising pages in the men's fashion magazine had dropped by around 20 per cent during the third quarter, while Bloomberg reported that ad sales for the magazine were an estimated $24.8 million over the first nine months of 2008, as against $301.1 million for Vogue.

Conde Nast is reportedly undecided on whether the twice-a-year Men's Vogue would be free-standing, or be distributed within Vogue, which is a monthly. Conde Nast is owned by the Newhouse family's Advance Publications Inc.